A few things stand out when considering the relationship of games and teaching. First of all, teaching is hard. Second, game design is hard. Finally, being good at both of these things is incredibly difficult for most educators. But the value of games for the development of pedagogy need not rely on the design and development of games that teach. This is because while teachers are most likely not going to be game designers, they are curriculum and course designers.
It is this point of commonality between games and pedagogy that is most fertile for the merging of design strategies. Not only does it offer the opportunity for teachers to merely append their existing skill sets rather than embrace an entire alternate field’s worth of knowledge, but it also allows them to expand upon or reimagine preexisting materials (courses, programs) rather than begin entirely anew. In this way, incorporating those lessons that games have to teach us about learning and literacy is a bit simpler, as educators are able to deal with a lower barrier of entry (since they are developing new methods from those they are already familiar with) and a shallower learning curve (since they need not learn the extensive intricacies behind the design of a complete game) than they would in designing games for the classroom.
Design is the process by which a designer creates ac ontext to be encountered by a participant, from which meaning emerges” (Rules of Play 41). This active reflection on the act of design is an important lesson for pedagogues building courses and curricula, because just as game designers must put design, context, participation, and meaning in relation to one another, the teacher must do so when devising courses of study. Just as the best games are only effective in attracting and maintaining the attention of players if they are well-designed, the best learning environments will be created by designers who take seriously the task of creating a context for students to decipher meaning through participation and immersion.
Perhaps this is where the educators have the most to learn from the rules of game play when considering the design of learning environments. As it stands, it is not the broader rule sets of learning that are in most urgent need of attention. Length of class time, number of weeks in a semester, amount of work expected on a regular basis—these different types of operational, constituative, and implicit rules usually work well as a functional framework. It is the elegant management of these rules and the goals and smaller subgoals of a learning environment that can turn a classroom or online space from a tedious workspace into an open place for exploration and investigation.
Instructional designers should refine their instruction to maximize the potential for learning. They should establish structures that are balanced in a way that keeps students focused on the material, but that are also navigable in a way that allows them to have some control over their experiences. Changes in learning environments that correspond to such an approach could be: creating greater student control over the scale and timing of assignments, offering a greater range of acceptable formats for assignments, encouraging more student-led learning sessions, or providing opportunities to redo specific projects in order to achieve higher grades. These are just a few suggestions of adjustments to the organizing rules of a learning environment that do not require a complex rethinking of the shape of a learning environment, but can offer different levels of freedom and increase the range of experience for students. There is no one-way to do this, no magic set of design parameters that maximizes the learning experience, because ultimately each environment, each individual or group of students, and each instructor is different.
If meaningful play can generate outcomes that motivate a gamer to work through learning situations in the hopes of developing mastery of a game, then the same parameters can be applied to a reconsidering of the types of experiences generated by learning environments. A student who can see that the work he does has discernable relevancy to his course of study, and that the reading, writing, and other assignments he completes will be integrated into the development of the class over time, is bound to have a more meaningful connection to the class. Educators can generate this type of meaning by explaining grading results more clearly, designing assignments that have multiple stages that build upon one another, or making sure that work that is done (say in a blog post or response paper) is connected back to group meetings of the course. All of these simple modifications to course design increase the discernable value of work done, and allows for students to see how the effort they exert is integrated to a larger learning system, which their actions can influence.
Expanding on the idea of choice and interactivity, Greg Costikyan notes that what in fact makes game play unique is not just interaction (Costikyan points out that even a light switch is interactive) or choice, but the decision making process that is involved in making that choice.
Costikyan’s explanation of the role of decision-making in games is particularly relevant to learning environments. Decision-making is a complex process that implies the ability to discern between options, then weigh their differences, and proceed with a choice that is based on the player’s ability to judge the situation. It is through learning how to make independent decisions that people learn how to learn and how to act independently; therefore the ability to teach proper decision-making skills, whether they are in writing, researching, or doing algebra, is undoubtedly a critical goal of learning environments.
Dewey knew back then that the key to student growth lay in having a diversity of experience and that in that diversity of experience the student should be given some level of self-determination to learn for himself. We can easily find in Dewey’s writing meaningful play, the encouragement of interaction, and the proper situation of learning in cultural circumstances. He even notes the importance of rules in his model of progressive education and uses games as an example of rules elegantly designed to enable play and experience but that also maintain social control (Dewey 52-53).
As students are given more agency, teachers however must find a way to cede some of their own agency without the learning environment slipping out of their control. In this way they face the challenge of telling the story a course is meant to tell by letting the students discover and explore the story on their own. These are the types of experiences that students have come to expect in their cultural excursions within video games and other digital media, and game design provides the model educators can turn to as they look to improve learning environments.
Read the entire article here: http://currents.cwrl.utexas.edu/2010/keramidas_what-games-have-to-teach-us-about-teaching-and-learning
It is this point of commonality between games and pedagogy that is most fertile for the merging of design strategies. Not only does it offer the opportunity for teachers to merely append their existing skill sets rather than embrace an entire alternate field’s worth of knowledge, but it also allows them to expand upon or reimagine preexisting materials (courses, programs) rather than begin entirely anew. In this way, incorporating those lessons that games have to teach us about learning and literacy is a bit simpler, as educators are able to deal with a lower barrier of entry (since they are developing new methods from those they are already familiar with) and a shallower learning curve (since they need not learn the extensive intricacies behind the design of a complete game) than they would in designing games for the classroom.
Design is the process by which a designer creates ac ontext to be encountered by a participant, from which meaning emerges” (Rules of Play 41). This active reflection on the act of design is an important lesson for pedagogues building courses and curricula, because just as game designers must put design, context, participation, and meaning in relation to one another, the teacher must do so when devising courses of study. Just as the best games are only effective in attracting and maintaining the attention of players if they are well-designed, the best learning environments will be created by designers who take seriously the task of creating a context for students to decipher meaning through participation and immersion.
Perhaps this is where the educators have the most to learn from the rules of game play when considering the design of learning environments. As it stands, it is not the broader rule sets of learning that are in most urgent need of attention. Length of class time, number of weeks in a semester, amount of work expected on a regular basis—these different types of operational, constituative, and implicit rules usually work well as a functional framework. It is the elegant management of these rules and the goals and smaller subgoals of a learning environment that can turn a classroom or online space from a tedious workspace into an open place for exploration and investigation.
Instructional designers should refine their instruction to maximize the potential for learning. They should establish structures that are balanced in a way that keeps students focused on the material, but that are also navigable in a way that allows them to have some control over their experiences. Changes in learning environments that correspond to such an approach could be: creating greater student control over the scale and timing of assignments, offering a greater range of acceptable formats for assignments, encouraging more student-led learning sessions, or providing opportunities to redo specific projects in order to achieve higher grades. These are just a few suggestions of adjustments to the organizing rules of a learning environment that do not require a complex rethinking of the shape of a learning environment, but can offer different levels of freedom and increase the range of experience for students. There is no one-way to do this, no magic set of design parameters that maximizes the learning experience, because ultimately each environment, each individual or group of students, and each instructor is different.
If meaningful play can generate outcomes that motivate a gamer to work through learning situations in the hopes of developing mastery of a game, then the same parameters can be applied to a reconsidering of the types of experiences generated by learning environments. A student who can see that the work he does has discernable relevancy to his course of study, and that the reading, writing, and other assignments he completes will be integrated into the development of the class over time, is bound to have a more meaningful connection to the class. Educators can generate this type of meaning by explaining grading results more clearly, designing assignments that have multiple stages that build upon one another, or making sure that work that is done (say in a blog post or response paper) is connected back to group meetings of the course. All of these simple modifications to course design increase the discernable value of work done, and allows for students to see how the effort they exert is integrated to a larger learning system, which their actions can influence.
Expanding on the idea of choice and interactivity, Greg Costikyan notes that what in fact makes game play unique is not just interaction (Costikyan points out that even a light switch is interactive) or choice, but the decision making process that is involved in making that choice.
Costikyan’s explanation of the role of decision-making in games is particularly relevant to learning environments. Decision-making is a complex process that implies the ability to discern between options, then weigh their differences, and proceed with a choice that is based on the player’s ability to judge the situation. It is through learning how to make independent decisions that people learn how to learn and how to act independently; therefore the ability to teach proper decision-making skills, whether they are in writing, researching, or doing algebra, is undoubtedly a critical goal of learning environments.
Dewey knew back then that the key to student growth lay in having a diversity of experience and that in that diversity of experience the student should be given some level of self-determination to learn for himself. We can easily find in Dewey’s writing meaningful play, the encouragement of interaction, and the proper situation of learning in cultural circumstances. He even notes the importance of rules in his model of progressive education and uses games as an example of rules elegantly designed to enable play and experience but that also maintain social control (Dewey 52-53).
As students are given more agency, teachers however must find a way to cede some of their own agency without the learning environment slipping out of their control. In this way they face the challenge of telling the story a course is meant to tell by letting the students discover and explore the story on their own. These are the types of experiences that students have come to expect in their cultural excursions within video games and other digital media, and game design provides the model educators can turn to as they look to improve learning environments.
Read the entire article here: http://currents.cwrl.utexas.edu/2010/keramidas_what-games-have-to-teach-us-about-teaching-and-learning